3D Printer Maintenance

Printer Maintenance

Your 3D printer was printing great and now it’s not. 3D printers print great when you first get them and if you don’t properly maintain them, they will fail. In this article I will explain how to maintain your printer to ensure your ability to continue turning out great prints. All 3D printers require some amount of routine maintenance to continue printing.

10 Routine Maintenance Steps

Experts say you should perform routine maintenance on your 3D printer about every 1500 hours or every two months. This is true, but you should also perform maintenance before and after each print.

Tools/Items Needed to Maintain Your Printer

Synthetic Oil With PTFE (High Viscosity)

Small Wire Brush

A good set of hex key screwdrivers and hex key wrenches (MM and Inch).

Flashlight

Needle Nose Pliers

Palette Knives (for removing your prints)

Blue painters Tape or Kapton Tape (for your print bed)

Glue Stick

Hair Spray (glass bed adhesive).

Wrenches for removing the print nozzle

Denatured Alcohol

Acetone

The following steps should be done every time before you print.

Clean/Maintain the print platform, replace the tape if used.

(Warning the Print Nozzle and Bed can be very hot, around 400 degrees Fahrenheit!)

Preheat the nozzle and extrude a small amount of filament.

While the nozzle is still hot, use a steel brush on it too clean any excess filament.

Preheat the print bed and level it.

Do these steps every 1500 hours of printing

Disassemble the extruder and brush excess material from the filament wheel teeth.

A former member of the Geek Squad with an M.S. in Emergency and Disaster Management, Master of Business Administration, BS in Computer Science, I have had an interest in computers for as long as I can remember and currently own and operate five 3D printers for the past two years. Follow me on Twitter @henryjolly.

Here are a few things that I have found helpful.
1. Adding some additional G-Code to the end of my prints that does additional retraction has helped immensely. It helps ensure that filament isn’t getting left in the hot end to cool down at the end of a print.
2. When using blue painter’s tape, I find it best to give it a slight sanding with very fine sand paper.
3. Gallon size Freezer Zip-Loc bags & extra desiccant are your friend. The freezer bags tend to hold up a little better than standard bags.

I have to disagree with you about the firmware updates. Updates can improve performance, add features, and also increase safety. You obviously need to make sure you prepare and weigh the pros and cons before you update. There is a risk of ‘bricking’ a printer when you update, but you run that risk updating your phone or computer. Educate yourself ahead of time, and you should be fine.

I have a Bowden setup on my MPSM v1. I remove the set screw holding the bowden to the top of the heat sink. Then I do a few cold pulls. Once I am done, I put everything back together, and “Bob’s your Uncle”!

I think the site admins here are trying to take on too much at once. There are several sites that I believe they operate as well. (hacks.today, addgeeks.com, gocryptly.com, etc.) I think they are spread too thin, and as such some of the sites go through lulls where there are no updates. Then other times, there are new articles every day. If you are new to the site, I definitely recommend going back through some of the older articles. There are some pretty informative articles by Stan Baldwin and Nathan Cox.

Daniel, I definitely feel your pain with personal reasons keeping you from work. I think the bigger issue is the feeling of “radio silence” on the site. I quick post to let the community know what’s up would go a long way. The maker community in general has always been very open and understanding. So I will leave you with a quote from Dr. Evil…
“Throw me a freaking bone here… I need the info.”